Wednesday, 9 March 2016

Something that's often considered a problem with Age of Sigmar is the three separate movement mechanics: the Move, Charge and Pile In. The issue being that each of the three steps of the movement is separate so you have to move your models repeatedly in the same turn, even more so at larger game sizes. However as usual it's no where near as much of a problem as it's made out to be.

The simple fact of the matter is that you are not doing this every turn, for the majority of units the first one or two turns will be just moving(Run move isn't separate as it adds to your move value). Then in the middle game the unit will likely charge (if not charged itself) which if successful will lead to a Pile in move.

For subsequent turns whilst in combat the unit will probably have a few pile in moves(which normally is only a portion of the unit moving) or it will retreat from combat. If the unit survives combat it may have a chance for a second charge or third charge during the remainder of the game. But often I have seen that a unit will have about one or two combats on average.

So in all likelihood, only a portion of your units will requires one maybe two moves of this size per game. Non combat units such as war machines, Wizards, ranged units will likely have no charge moves and I would expect half your combat units to be charged by the enemy so they don't actually conduct a charge move.

Even in larger games with larger units, the amount of three-move phases you have won't be much different as combats will likely last longer and due to the larger amount of models.

Personally I love the new move mechanics in Age of Sigmar, I find it gives combats a unique flow and realism when compared to the ranked block combats of previous editions of Warhammer. It also allows for some interesting tactics and formations that previously were just not possible.

Wednesday, 2 March 2016

If a lower amount of terrain is used on your table, or if terrain rules are not used, then units may become more or less powerful than they were designed to be.

Wizards and Priests have many extra benefits from terrain. Often giving a bonus to cast or unbind, extra summoning ability or powerful spells unique to terrain. Other terrain pieces can hugely benefit characters with healing or unique abilities, the Magewrath Throne for example can be literally game changing.

Ranged attacks suffer from increased terrain due to line of sight rules and in the same light, so do lightly armoured units and heroes benefit who would otherwise suffer worst from those ranged attacks.

So for example, if ranged units are highly pointed because not enough terrain has been used during play tests allowing them to rain down arrows with impunity, the Meta has been changed by the lack of terrain.

As I mentioned in a previous post, you should have 8 pieces of terrain on the table on average and each of these should either use the terrain Warscroll it represents or roll on the scenery table.

Now this is quite a subjective topic which is not easy to determine the true differences and whether it makes an impactful change. But a good example is Clash Comp, which specifically does not use the Terrain Warscrolls, so you must assume the pool system is biased towards terrain having low impact on the units in games.

In summary, terrain influences different units in different ways, depending on what system you use to select armies some units will be more or less valued depending on the amount of terrain that system was play tested with compared to how much terrain you use.

In the end, the Terrain Warscrolls are fun and create more synergy. If you aren't using terrain, you aren't making the most of Age of Sigmar.